Introspection with the Devil
by Shiawase Vampire
Summary: [Lucifer] Christopher Rudd introspection.  Centers around events in issue 29.  One shot.


**Introspection with the Devil**

Christopher stared at the back of the man's, no demon's, no…thing's head as it walked up around the parapet of his castle a few feet in front of him. Inside he felt a great feeling of disgust wrought the inside of his stomach, or where his stomach would be if it, in fact, were functioning like it had when he was alive. The taste traveled up his throat and settled on his tongue where he formed words that spoke casual pleasantries and nonchalantly spoke of the lands he had acquired along with his title.

To think that he—a soul formerly of the damned, formerly of the living and once known as Christopher Rudd, now Duke of Gly—had to host the former lord of Hell in his house. He, who had been the source and cause of his continued suffering for three hundred years, was in his grasp. So close…so close…

Not even a year before—the time a mere batting of his eye now—he had been brought out of suffering and into a new and wholly horrific kind, nor would he had believed that he would be face to face with him.

Funny how time changes all.

For longer than even he himself knew, he had been plotting the downfall of those who made their living on the pain of others, or rather lived off of. Hell had to fall, and if he had to do it, then so be it. Those exact words have never been thought, nor spoken under his breath in soft, ponderous wonder. His heart, so tormented and shattered, screamed it; his hands, skilled in the art of fencing and more recently, killing, itched to take action; and his brain ever so slowly processed the confusing emotions, storing them away for a later time when it could think clearer. Having a dukedom thrown into his hands had that kind of effect.

But even so, it was the first rung on a long and dangerous ladder towards his goal. Well, second. The first was his being taken out of his punishment on the whim of a slumming and very whorish noble woman. He didn't have to put any effort into that at all. He could remember the feeling of his flesh healing around the hooks pulling various parts of his skin as his body was suspended high above the ground…then that flesh being torn carelessly when his body was removed. The cold air bit his naked and filthy skin, the sulfurous air burning into the newly made wounds; they filling and trying to heal despite the pain it caused. It was a pain that would never be forgotten. The devout Christian in him hated that he had come to dirty his soul even more each and every time he rutted with the Lady Lys. It was perhaps the same part of him that felt regret and pity for her.

After all that time, all the superfluous manners towards the demon nobility, he could count himself among their number, an outsider thrust in the middle of the hierarchy. There were days, months before, when he feared the back-lashings he would feel for attaining a position higher than some of the courtiers who normally visited the Lord Arux. But those days were gone. The novelty of it all had passed quicker than the fashion. He had gained Arux's trust even after killing his son and poisoning his daughter. Other demons, he reasoned, would have done it eventually had he not. Hell was a place of animals and back stabbings.

He vaguely wondered if his present company could feel the conflicting torment in his soul. The prince of lies and lord of Hell certainly was not what he had expected him to look. At least the priests hadn't been wrong about the brimstone. If Christopher were to have happened upon him as a living man, he wouldn't have thought twice about bowing and waiting for the exulted lord to pass. Even now, whether the thing knew it or not, the Morningstar exuded an overwhelming force of power that one would be fool enough to ignore.

The power was filled with pride and casual malevolence. They were palpable, more so than the cinder clouds floating some distance above their heads.

He gulped, sweat beading on his forehead. A drop slipped down his temple, narrowly missing his eye.

Christopher had a chance now to make up for it all. To make up for the killing of that innocent boy. For hurting Lys, the demon he loathed and loved. To even make up for the suffering of all his fellow damned brethren now ground into the coveted pain the nobles lusted over.

The Morningstar had bled like a normal, regular man. The assassination attempt was almost, dear he think it? A godsend.

And now he gripped his rapier and in an instant brought it up and ready to pierce where the thing's heart should be. It would be simple. All too simple. Take a quick step forward, lunging forward as the blade sunk into the thing's chest and it would all be over.

Doubt, however, was a powerful thing. After all, the man was who he was, had been an angel, rebelled, fell, and ruled Hell for an innumerable amount of centuries or even millennia. What if he wasn't the one to blame? What if the power higher than them all was? Inside, a little more of his Christian soul died.

Then he asked. And so received an answer.

He sighed deeply, the tip of his blade falling to the ground as the man's back was turned on him.

The thing said next certainly startled him.

"…and your plans to topple Hell are your business."

His heart screamed with joy.

"My—my own…?" he asked stupidly.

Slowly the dominoes began to fall; two and two made four again, and Christopher Rudd began to think for the first time, with full consciousness, about how he could bring Hell to its knees.


End file.
